One of our most elemental behaviors as human beings—like eating, sleeping, and breathing—is walking. It’s an amateur activity. But what happens when we become explicit, inquisitive, and deliberate about what is as natural to us as eating and breathing? Walking is both universal and idiosyncratic; we all walk but choose different paths, peppered by unique interactions and experiences. Opening November 2, 2018 and on view until March 10, 2019, Other Walks, Other Lines considers what walking means in a contemporary context, touching upon topics such as urban planning, immigration, and the derive.

Organized by the San José Museum of Art, and curated by Lauren Schell Dickens, curator; Rory Padeken, associate curator; and Kathryn Wade, curatorial associate, Other Walks Other Lines focuses on artwork made during the last 30 years by artists around the world who use walking as a mode of making the world, as well as being in it. The exhibition is divided into six sections: Meaning of Ordinariness; Pilgrimage and Psychogeography; A Body Measured Against the Earth: Immigration and Land Wars; Access/Ability; Street Life: Processions and Protests; and Other Walks: Gabriel Orozco (November 2, 2018–February 17, 2019). A show within a show, Other Walks: Gabriel Orozco highlights Orozco’s photographs and videos.

In conjunction with the exhibition, SJMA commissioned new works of art by Lordy Rodriguez, Brendan Fernandes, and Lara Schnitger that activate the gallery and take the exhibition outside of the Museum. Lordy Rodriguez created walking tours based on the routes taken by two recent marches in San José: the Women’s March in 2017 and March for Our Lives in 2018 (copies of which are available at SJMA’s front desk). Choreographer and artist Brendan Fernandes addresses the borders that are constructed within a museum’s walls. In Inaction, Fernandes choreographed the movements of dancers to explore boundaries and thresholds within the gallery. Lara Schnitger’s Suffragette City—a participatory procession and protest—is an example of a street demonstration that begins at the Museum and walks through downtown San José.

“As we reflect on what it means to be a borderless museum, San José Museum of Art is thrilled to present an exhibition that focuses on accessibility, immigration, procession, and protest. SJMA strives to work across cultural boundaries and to be a cultural hub for the community,” says Oshman Executive Director S. Sayre Batton. “With this exhibition, we are thrilled to partner with over 30 community organizations as part of New Terrains: Mobility and Migration, a cross-disciplinary collaboration that explores how bodies move through social and political spaces.”